


… Then Separate and Drift

by randi2204



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drift Bond, Drift Compatibility, M/M, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 16:42:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6762001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randi2204/pseuds/randi2204
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of the Kaiju War, Chris pilots a Jaeger with Vin, while Ezra waits back at the Shatterdome.  No one is satisfied with this state of affairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	… Then Separate and Drift

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** The Magnificent Seven belong to MGM, Mirisch and Trilogy. Pacific Rim belongs to Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures. Not mine, no money. Title from Samuel Beckett.

The door to his quarters clanged on its hinges as he pushed it open, and Chris sighed at the noise.  It was deep in the night now, and when he’d left…

 

When he’d left, it’d been at the blaring of the kaiju alarm, calling him and Vin from slumber to suit up.

 

And now, as he’d expected, the light was on and Ezra sat on the foot of the bunk, staring at the door with hollow eyes.  But when Chris stepped in, Ezra’s tired features brightened, and he sagged back against the bulkhead in relief.  “You’re back.”

 

Chris smiled, though exhaustion dragged at him.  “Yeah, safe and sound.”  He shoved the door shut behind him, and it creaked even more loudly this time.

 

“Got to have that fixed,” Ezra said, frowning.  Then he unfolded himself from the bunk and maneuvered Chris around in the tiny space so that he sat where Ezra had been.  “You look dead on your feet,” he said, kneeling down to work on removing Chris’s boots, loosening the leather straps to pull them off.  “Hard fight?”

 

Chris swallowed, reached out to put a hand on Ezra’s bare shoulder.  He wore nothing but a pair of soft sleep pants, and his skin was cool from where he’d leaned against the wall.  But he was alive under Chris’s hand and that was all that mattered.  “Lost Romeo Delta.”

 

Ezra glanced up sharply, fingers stilling on Chris’s boot.  “What about…”  He cut himself off at Chris’s expression, and looked back down at his hands.  “Damn,” he said softly.  “They were a good team.”  Slowly, he started pulling at the buckles again, and Chris could see his hands were trembling.

 

“I made it back, Ezra,” he reminded him, squeezing his shoulder.  “Vin and me, we made it back.”

 

It was not the right thing to say, and Chris knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth but he couldn’t take it back.  Ezra didn’t flinch; he had too much control over his emotions for that.  He simply went still again for a moment, just long enough for Chris to draw breath to speak once more, though what he would have said, he had no idea.

 

“I know,” Ezra said as he pulled off Chris’s boots, hands steady now.  “And I’m very relieved you are uninjured.”  He knelt up to undo Chris’s jumpsuit next, peeling it off his shoulders to pool about his waist.  “Up,” he ordered, tapping at Chris’s hip.

 

Chris let him complete their ritual, the same one they performed each time Chris came back from a training exercise or a combat op.  He knew it was Ezra’s way of checking to make sure he wasn’t hurt.  _And I kinda like it,_ he admitted.  How Ezra got out of his duties in LOCCENT to do this when he was supposed to be on-shift, though, he had no idea.

 

Because that was the problem.  Ezra wasn’t a Ranger, wasn’t Chris’s co-pilot; Vin was.

 

He and Vin matched up nearly perfectly in the Drift.  The only people who had longer or stronger neural handshakes were related by blood, and even then, it wasn’t a guarantee.

 

Chris was sure that he and Ezra would match up in the Drift, too, that they’d be just as strong as him and Vin.  But it wasn’t going to happen.  Marshal Travis wouldn’t let anyone who wasn’t a Ranger pilot a Jaeger, and he wasn’t about to release Ezra from his post in LOCCENT to send him to the Academy, either.

 

_I’m not sure I could do what Ezra does every time,_ he thought as Ezra pushed him to lie down on the narrow bunk they somehow shared.  _I don’t think I could watch Ezra go out in a Jaeger without me._

 

Ezra turned off the light.  The lights from the Shatterdome lit up their room through the porthole, but they were both used to it by now.  Chris shuffled over until his back was against the bulkhead to make room and felt Ezra slide into the bed next to him.  Immediately, he wrapped his arms around Ezra and drew him flush against his chest, to tangle their legs together and feel their bodies pressed as close as they could get.

 

Ezra dropped off to sleep almost as soon as he’d closed his eyes, but the adrenaline from the fight still sang through Chris despite his exhaustion, and he lay awake for a long while, listening to Ezra’s even breaths, feeling each one huff warm against his collarbone.  He couldn’t stop his hands as they roved lightly over Ezra’s back, tracing the firm muscle there, and it struck him, as it always did, that Ezra was built to pilot a Jaeger.

 

_Wish you’d come along earlier,_ he thought, and let his eyes fall shut.

 

Because this _wasn’t_ as close as they could get.

 

***

He’d only been asleep a couple hours when Ezra’s alarm went off.  He woke, as he always did, at the feel of Ezra rolling away to turn off the alarm.  But he was still too tired to stay awake for long, and drifted off again.

 

He floated back to the surface enough to be aware of Ezra’s hand brushing lightly across his cheek, and smiled at the press of lips against his.  Then Ezra quietly ordered him to go back to sleep, and that was the last he remembered.

 

When he woke again he was alone, but he was used to that.  Ezra had a 12-hour shift in LOCCENT, monitoring for kaiju, though it wasn’t likely there would be another attack for at least a couple weeks.

 

He pulled on his jumpsuit and boots and headed out of their quarters.  _Maybe this time I can convince Marshal Travis it’d be better…_

 

As on any day, the marshal would be in his office, filling out the paperwork that accompanied any kaiju attack and Jaeger deployment.  Much of what he had to work on involved funding; Jaegers weren’t cheap to build or repair, and it took a lot of money to keep the Shatterdomes operating when taking that into consideration, in addition to the equipment upgrades necessary for LOCCENT and the K-science division.

 

Not to mention the media hits the Ranger Corps took every time a kaiju made land and damaged property.

 

Resolutely, Chris didn’t let himself think about San Francisco, how the kaiju Trespasser had laid waste to so much.  He no longer wished that he’d been home with Sarah and Adam when the kaiju had attacked, because getting his revenge every time one of the monsters appeared from the Breach was so much more satisfying.

 

With one measured breath, he let it all go; he’d had to learn how in order to complete the Drift without burning out his partner.  It still hurt sometimes, when he let himself think of Adam and what he might have been like now, or of Sarah’s sweet smile, which covered a determination that rivaled his own.

 

To help clear his head, he detoured through the hangar, just to take a long look up at Desert Thunder.  The repair crew had already made progress on repairing the damage that the kaiju had inflicted during the battle.  As Chris watched, the crew replaced those parts of the Jaeger’s chest armor that the monster had scored with its talon-like claws.

 

It helped, some, to see the outside being restored.  The inside, he knew, was getting checked over even more thoroughly than the outside, from the pilot stations in the Conn-Pod to the least bit of cable and wire in the Jaeger’s fingers.

 

The air was thick with the smell of hot metal and burnt insulation and paint.  He felt a deep satisfaction at that; the repair crew for Desert Thunder always had hundreds of gallons of black paint at the ready.  The new plates for the chest had already been painted to match the rest of the Jaeger, and what was left over would be used for touching up any areas that needed it.

 

The crew had also put a fresh coat of paint on Desert Thunder’s emblem, the only part of the Jaeger that wasn’t painted over flat black.  It was not what Chris would have chosen for a Jaeger named _Desert Thunder_ , which would have been a stylized cloud and lightning bolt.  No, the emblem was of a girl who looked like a picture he’d seen in an old book, and she wore something that might have been a PPDC jumpsuit, but Chris had never seen any of the female techs wear their jumpsuit like that – hanging off her shoulders with a white cropped top, belted in tight at the waist with an ammo belt, and boots that rose up all the way past her knees.  In one hand she held a smaller version of Desert Thunder’s main gun, while the other was propped on her hip.  Her flaming red hair seemed even brighter against all the black.

 

It didn’t matter what anyone else thought; Desert Thunder was the best Jaeger on the line – not just the best Mark-III, but _the best_ , period.  The three of them – him, Vin and Desert Thunder – had racked up four kills, including the one last night.  Some teams got as many as three, but most didn’t make it that far before getting cocky and then getting killed.

 

_But_ we _can do it,_ Chris thought, staring up at the girl on Desert Thunder’s left pectoral.  She seemed to wink down at him. 

 

If he stood there much longer, the crew would start to think that he was checking up on them.  A Ranger had to know his Jaeger inside and out, but that didn’t mean he had to oversee everything the repair crew did.  _I’ll come back later,_ he thought.  _Maybe sit up on the gantry after everyone’s done for the day._   He headed down the corridor on the other side of the repair bay, as had been his intent all along.

 

It was a measure of how dedicated the repair crew was that they had already finished so much of what needed to be done.  The test drive would be in the next day, no more than two, to make sure the Jaeger didn’t have any glitches, anything that would kill him and Vin the next time they took her into battle.  The repair crew was the best, too; Desert Thunder would be as good as new, if not better, by the time they were done with her.

 

Detouring through the bay made his trip to the marshal’s office longer, but the way the Shatterdome corridors twisted and curved around meant that Chris could have taken any one of several routes to the same destination.  Soon enough, he could see Travis’s office up ahead, the door open as usual.  Everyone knew not to bother the marshal unless it was an emergency – such as, say, three kaiju were coming out of the breech.

 

He hadn’t even raised his hand to rap on the door frame when Travis said, “Come in, Mister Larabee,” without even looking up from his paperwork.

 

Chris hesitated and the marshal did look up then, mouth pulled in a wry grin.  “You’re here for your usual post-mission request, I imagine.”

 

“Didn’t realize I’d gotten so predictable,” Chris answered, stepping inside and pulling the door closed.

 

“Only in your dogged persistence,” Travis replied, and pointed at the chair across from his desk.  “Besides, I’m not so old that I can’t be taught.”

 

That was true; despite his age, the marshal had learned as much about the technology of the Drift as any Ranger must.  Travis was too old to pilot a Jaeger, but Chris had no doubt that the man still had enough mental stamina to run one by himself and come out the other side only a little worse for wear.

 

Chris sat down in the indicated chair.  “Yes, sir, you’re right,” he said.  “After losing Romeo Delta last night…”

 

Travis rubbed a hand over his face, as if that knowledge hurt him personally… which, Chris reflected, knowing the marshal, it probably did.  “I know.”

 

“You’ve got a perfectly good pool of Ranger candidates in LOCCENT,” Chris said.  “Might be worth it to send some of them to the Academy.”

 

“Or one in particular,” Travis said, dry as dust.  “Chris, despite his somewhat questionable past, Mister Standish is my chief of operations in LOCCENT.  I can’t just send him to the Academy in the hopes he has what it takes to ride a Jaeger.”

 

“You’ve done it before,” Chris challenged.  “What about – ”

 

“Mary has what it takes,” Travis retorted, raising his voice to override Chris.  He checked himself and took off his wire-rim glasses, tossing them to the desk on top of his paperwork.  “It’s not her fault she’s not Drift compatible with any current Rangers.”

 

Chris didn’t say anything to that; he had long been of the opinion that the fact Mary was stuck in J-tech was best for everyone.  She’d just graduated from the Academy when he and Vin had arrived to take over Desert Thunder, which she clearly had thought she’d be jockeying, never mind she didn’t have a co-pilot.  She’d still been grieving for her husband, killed on the line, and Chris figured that was what had made her so incompatible with other Rangers; she hadn’t learned how to curb that grief.

 

His silence did not go unnoticed; Travis shot him a sour look.  “Mary’s status is neither here nor there,” he said, folding his hands together on the desk.  “And truthfully, most of the operations staff in LOCCENT couldn’t handle a Jaeger – that’s why they were shunted into operations in the first place.  It’s the same here as in any army; not everyone is meant to be a front-line soldier.”

 

“But some of them _can,_ ” Chris said, leaning forward.  “They’re just there because they were _shunted_ based on their pasts…”

 

Travis ran a hand through his hair.  “The examinations they’re given are _supposed_ to help sort them into appropriate…”

 

“Or because of someone else’s notion of who should or should not pilot a Jaeger.”  He gave Travis a pointed look.  “ _I_ think Ezra can pilot a Jaeger.  What makes _you_ think he can’t?”

 

Chris was pushing hard, he knew, harder than he had after other deployments.  Maybe he was pushing _too_ hard; the marshal could be prickly at times, but especially after losing a Jaeger with its team.  _Got to try,_ he told himself. _It’s time now._

 

Losing Romeo Delta had changed something; he had known Rafe and Claire, of course, because each Ranger knew every other one.  But they were so _young_.  They’d had their whole lives in front of them before the kaiju had come, and now they were gone, and their parents were suffering a double blow.

 

Chris hadn’t minded the thought that he might die in Desert Thunder with Vin until he started to live again.  He had enough regrets in his life that he didn’t want any more.

 

“I don’t know that he can’t,” Travis said.  “In fact, I believe he _could_.”

 

Chris stared.  _Didn’t expect_ that, he thought.  “You do?”

 

“Then again, I think that about a lot of people who then wash out of the Academy.”  The marshal looked _old_ as he admitted that.  “I’m inclined to think the best of people, and am often disappointed.”

 

“If you think Ezra can make it as a Jaeger pilot, why in _hell_ haven’t you sent him to the Academy before this?” Chris demanded, standing abruptly.

 

The marshal bristled at his tone.  “I give you a lot of leeway, Mister Larabee,” he said, a warning in his voice.  “But one of these days, you’re going to run out.”

 

Chris knew what he meant, and it wasn’t just his current insubordination: Jaeger pilots bunked together, co-pilot with co-pilot, to foster the bond between them, maybe, or just to annoy the hell out of siblings who hadn’t gotten on each others’ nerves growing up; he wasn’t entirely clear on that point.  Most of the pilots had had one night stands, but none of them took a lover, or if they did, they kept it so far under wraps that no one could tell.

 

The marshal knew who was in whose bed regardless.  _But it’s not like we tried that hard to hide it,_ Chris thought.

 

But it had never been in Chris to back down from a fight, no matter who was in authority, much less when someone was offering such thinly veiled threats.  He braced his hands on the marshal’s desk, leaned down close.  “You need all the Jaeger pilots you can get,” he said.

 

Travis pursed his lips; clearly, he didn’t like what Chris was saying.  “I need _teams_ , Chris.  I need working pairs of Jaeger pilots… loners and singletons do me no good at all, as you well know.  That’s why we look for siblings or other relatives, because they have a shared frame of reference for many memories, and are so much more likely to be Drift-compatible.   You and Mister Tanner are exceptional in that respect – you’re part of a working team without being related, not to mention one of the best we can field. There’s no logical reason to split you up, which is you are requesting in this… roundabout way.”

 

Chris blew out a breath.  _This again,_ he thought, exasperated.  He and Vin – and Buck as well – had been under all kinds of scrutiny, since they were non-related but Drift-compatible in varying degrees.  “Maybe it isn’t as unusual as you think,” he said.  “Maybe it isn’t about a shared frame of reference.  Maybe it’s about… other things.” He had a feeling it was; but he wasn’t about to share _that_.

 

“Maybe,” the marshal said, tapping his pen idly against his paperwork.  “I’ll grant you that, Chris; anything is possible in this universe.  And maybe you’ll be Drift-compatible with Mister Standish… and maybe you won’t.  What happens then?”

 

Chris’s mouth went a little dry at that.  It _was_ possible; just because he _wanted_ to be Drift-compatible with Ezra didn’t mean it was going to happen.  Just for a second, he let himself imagine what it would be like, forced to stand by when Ezra went out to fight in some other Jaeger with some other pilot at his side.

 

_“He’s_ mine, _”_ he wanted to growl; no one got to see into all the corners of Ezra’s devious mind but _him_.

 

Because what the marshal was implying was that he was risking it all; if he and Ezra _weren’t_ Drift-compatible, the marshal would force them both to bunk with their co-pilots,  to live in someone else’s pocket instead of each other’s.

 

He was risking it all another way, too; if he and Ezra weren’t Drift-compatible, what would it do to _them?_ He couldn’t bear to think about what it would be like if they buckled under the stress and drifted apart instead of together. 

 

_If we keep the status quo, Travis won’t split us up,_ Chris thought, staring down at the marshal’s misleadingly bland expression.  _But if we risk it…_

 

Ezra always said he didn’t gamble; he only bet on a sure thing.  _But that’s not true,_ he thought, _because, hell, he never would’ve risked a damn thing on_ me _if it was._   This… this was an acceptable risk.

 

“We will be,” he said firmly, allowing no doubt to enter his tone. 

 

Travis harrumphed, as if he’d already seen Chris’s reservations the moment they’d crossed his mind, but he didn’t say anything.

 

Chris matched him silence for silence, settling back into the chair.  More insubordination, but this wasn’t something that Travis would care about.

 

And in fact, the marshal just shook his head.  “And what about Mister Tanner?” he asked.

 

Chris grinned, because he knew he’d won; the marshal was all bluster now.  “If Vin don’t know about this, who the hell has been in my brain every mission we’ve run?”

 

Travis sighed and rubbed his forehead.  “Chris, you know very well what I mean.”

 

He sobered.  It wasn’t an easy thing to do, to just… _ditch_ someone you were Drift-compatible with, and that was essentially what Chris had been doing almost since he and Ezra had gotten together.  But a man couldn’t be part of two Jaeger teams; he couldn’t be Vin’s partner and Ezra’s, too.

 

“Vin knows,” Chris answered at last, then shrugged.  “Might’ve seen it in the Drift when I wasn’t even sure… Anyway.  I wouldn’t have asked the first time if he hadn’t told me to get off my ass and do it… and if I hadn’t seen in the Drift that he meant it.”

 

As much as he wanted to pilot with Ezra, Chris wouldn’t have just abandoned Vin, either.  The Drift was a fine thing for cutting through unnecessary bullshit in some ways; Vin’s certainty that he’d be fine and that Chris and Ezra would be too had echoed down the Drift like a bell ringing.

 

“I’m not turnin’ my back on Vin,” he said.  “He’s my friend and my co-pilot, and believe me when I say we talked this to _death_.”

 

Travis looked like he was trying to hold back a grin.  “All that means for the two of you is that you said more than three words about it.”

 

“I guess we said all that was necessary, then,” Chris retorted.

 

The marshal snorted.  “The only team I have that’s so adept at communicating without saying a word, and you want to break them up.”

 

Hearing that, Chris tensed; he’d thought that Travis was going to agree, and now… “We’ll be just as good,” he said, trying to keep his words cool, not let the worry he felt show through.  “Just wait and see.”

 

“You think so?”  The marshal pulled out a folder from his desk drawer, a _thick_ folder, filled with paper – the red-flagged disciplinary notices peeking out the side made Chris think it was _his_ folder for a moment, and then the marshal opened it, and he saw Ezra’s personnel picture on top, the same one that was on his ID badge.

 

“All I can promise right now,” Travis said softly, looking down at Ezra’s folder, “is that I will _consider_ it, as soon as Mister Standish has trained a replacement.”

 

Chris felt his throat tighten; this was it, this was what he’d wanted for so long.  For just a moment, he thought about telling Travis to forget it, that they’d just go on as they had all this time.  But then he thought about it, not how _he_ felt, but how Ezra looked when he left for an alarm, how he couldn’t hide his relief when Chris returned.  “Sounds good to me,” he said, forcing the words out past the lump in his throat.

 

They would be together.  Out there in a Jaeger, in their quarters sharing that too-small bunk, connected through the Drift or not, they would be together.  That was as much as he could ask for.  Those doubts that plagued him had no place between him and Ezra, and Chris firmly pushed them to the side.  He knew they’d come back, but he’d just push them aside again.

 

“Quite frankly, Mister Larabee,” the marshal said, his tone bone-dry, “if you and Mister Standish _aren’t_ Drift-compatible after all this, I will turn administration of this Shatterdome over to Mister Dunne, and that’s a fact.”

 

Chris laughed.

 

***

The kaiju didn’t know the timetable; it was only a week later that the alarm blared again.  This time it was during the day, which at least meant that the pilots didn’t have to shake off sleep to run their Jaeger.

 

_On the other hand,_ Chris thought as he suited up, _it means that the kaiju are steppin’ up their attacks._   And that wasn’t a good thing; it was common knowledge that the defense corps was just about holding their own as it was.  They weren’t losing ground to nuclear fallout anymore, but they weren’t stopping the kaiju from coming, either.

 

Once they were in their drive suits, he and Vin ran to their Conn-Pod, where it was ready to drop into Desert Thunder’s huge metal frame.  Once there, they got the kaiju’s designation and a rough outline of its appearance, while waiting to be connected through the Pons.

 

Chris traced the shape of the kaiju with his eyes, concentrating while he waited for the familiar buzz of the neural handshake to peak, waited for Vin’s presence to take up residence in his head in that shared space they had.

 

Then, suddenly, there was someone else in his head with him, Vin’s thoughts familiar from dozens of training simulations and missions and post-Drift hangovers and discussions and sparring in the Kwoon…

 

One of the memories that the Drift always seemed to dig up for Chris was that last morning before he left San Francisco, waving to Sarah and Adam until he couldn’t see them any longer.  It still made him ache; it probably always would.  But it hurt a little less now than it used to. 

 

His pain drew up Vin’s memories of his mother, a thin woman, her pretty features worn by care and illness, and…

 

Then they were in sync, in the Drift, and Desert Thunder was tugged out of her bay toward the Shatterdome doors, moved along the track by monstrous servos.  The great doors swung open, and the Jumphawk choppers hovering just outside took up the lift-lines to carry them into position.

 

“Desert Thunder.”  Chris tuned in to Marshal Travis’s voice, felt Vin do the same.  “The Class Three kaiju designated Shellhead is predicted to arrive from the Breech in approximately twenty minutes.  You are to hold the Miracle Mile.  That kaiju is not to make land, understood?”

 

“Understood, sir,” he and Vin chorused.

 

“Good hunting, Desert Thunder.” The marshal closed his mike but LOCCENT was still monitoring them, both through the Pons and through the open comm.

 

The choppers lifted Desert Thunder from the pad outside the Shatterdome, and they were on their way, out past the mouth of the bay and into the ocean.

 

The Drift wasn’t telepathy, wasn’t pushing thoughts into the other’s head; it was more a sense of a thought that wasn’t your own…  but could be; someone who knew you as well as you knew yourself, maybe even better.

 

_See the—_

 

— _skull, the crest_ —

 

— _might be reinforced_ —

 

— _one hell of a weapon_.

 

“We’re at the Miracle Mile,” the lead chopper pilot announced.  “Ready to deploy?”

 

“Ready,” Chris replied, and braced for the jolt as the lines released.  They hit the water with a great splash.

 

“Two minutes to contact,” a voice announced, one of the techs in LOCCENT though Chris couldn’t have said who it was. “Shellhead is heading straight for you.”

 

“Got it,” Vin drawled.  “We’re ready.”

 

Looking through the forward screen, Chris saw a wake cutting through the water, indicating that the kaiju was heading for them at great speed.

 

They didn’t bother to ask if the other was ready; they could feel/sense/ _know_ the way they each tensed with readiness.  They didn’t have to discuss what their opening would be; the cannon mounted on Desert Thunder’s left arm was already priming.

 

They didn’t even wait for the kaiju to breach before firing; a great gout of steam went up where the beam from the cannon struck the water, and they heard the kaiju bellow as if in pain. It sank beneath the surface, and the steam billowed around the Jaeger.

 

Chris glanced over at Vin, one eyebrow arched.  Vin snorted.  “We should be so lucky.”  Cautiously they moved Desert Thunder forward, walking in tandem.

 

The water broke in front of them and the kaiju rose up, screaming, and they had to backpedal or be knocked over.

 

“Yep, just our luck.”

 

They delivered a hammer blow to the beast’s back, and the reverberation echoed through Desert Thunder’s arms all the way up their own.

 

“Guess it ain’t just the crest that’s reinforced…”

 

The kaiju swung its head, catching them with the crest to shove them back until they staggered over something behind them and went under the waves.  It leapt upon them as they fell, shrieking loudly.

 

They were prepared, though, and grabbed the kaiju’s outstretched arms, planted one foot in its soft underbelly and flung it up and over their heads.

 

“Well done,” a voice said quietly over the comm, and Chris and Vin paused for one split second to grin at each other.  In a flash, they were up on their feet again, closing on the kaiju.  The beast was rising up from the water, head whipping around trying to find them.  It finally deduced they were behind it, and turned its lumbering body around just as they tried to get on its back in the best position to break its neck.  Its claws raked down the Jaeger’s front with a hideous squealing sound.

 

“Hey, we just had this painted!”

 

They shoved the clawed arm away and closed with the beast again, kicking and punching.  Only the head and spine were reinforced, they discovered; a blow to the soft underbelly made it stagger.  They pressed it back, grinning fiercely.

 

“Desert Thunder…” A woman’s voice came over the comm.  It was probably Mary, but if it was, she was hardly recognizable.  “A… a second kaiju has appeared.”

 

“From the Breech?” Chris asked, even as they swung at the kaiju’s unprotected chest.

 

“Hope it’s headin’ somewhere else,” Vin grunted.  “Just so someone else can enjoy their company…”

 

“No, it’s… it’s not.”  Mary sounded strangled, and Chris and Vin both paused.  Their Drift was confusion doubled, but they still reacted as one when the kaiju roared.  They brought up the cannon and fired; the blast tore open a strip along the beast’s side as it flung itself back into the water.  But they both knew it was still alive; they hadn’t inflicted enough damage to kill it yet.

 

“Desert Thunder,” and Chris went very still, because that was _Ezra’s_ voice over the comm; he was calm and steady where Mary had sounded stuttering and stunned.  “The second kaiju is not at the Breach… it appeared in the bay outside the Shatterdome.  We are scrambling Bravo Red…”

 

Outside the _Shatterdome_? Chris tried to collect his thoughts, pulling away from the fight, from the Drift.  How in _hell_ could it appear outside the _Shatterdome_?

 

He was hardly aware he’d asked the question aloud, then Ezra replied, “It was probably hiding in Shellhead’s wake.  If it wasn’t…” He took a breath, then went on quietly, “Then it has the ability to cloak itself from our sensors.”

 

Chris heard a kaiju roar, but it sounded… distorted, echoing, and he realized that it came through the comm, that the second kaiju was attacking the Shatterdome _right now_.

 

_Ezra!_ And just like that, he dropped out of the Drift; Vin’s presence in his mind was just _gone,_ so fast that it made him gasp, left his head pounding.  Desert Thunder froze around him, unable to move without her pilots directing her through the neural handshake.  He heard Vin calling his name, heard the marshal shouting to scramble all the Jaegers currently in the Shatterdome, then the bellow of the kaiju again.

 

Chris shuddered at the sounds coming through the comm, wondered if it had sounded like this when Trespasser had destroyed San Francisco, if Sarah and Adam had…

 

“Chris!”  Vin grabbed his arm, shook him roughly.  “Where are you?”

 

He blinked slowly, glanced over at Vin, whose eyes were hard and dark and cold as ice in the glare of the console lights.   Whatever was in his face made Vin’s expression soften slightly.

 

“C’mon, cowboy,” Vin said, voice firm.  “We got a job to do.”

 

This time, the roar was right outside, and Chris remembered that they hadn’t finished what they’d come to do.  “I’m here,” he answered belatedly.

 

Vin only nodded, didn’t say anything about how hard it would be to reinstate the Drift while they were under attack.  Chris gritted his teeth and pushed away the knowledge that there was another kaiju, that it was attacking the Shatterdome, _that I’m not there to protect Ezra…_ The Drift was necessary _right now_.

 

But getting into it wasn’t as easy as it had been before, like he was holding back… or Vin was.  _Can’t blame him for that_ , he thought, and took a moment to recognize his shame before letting it go.  _It happened,_ he reminded himself.  _Just acknowledge it and move on._

 

They fell into the Drift just as Desert Thunder fell; the kaiju they’d been fighting had at last decided that they were disabled and pushed them over.  The Jaeger tumbled beneath the waves.  They waited a moment before rising up again, cannon priming, this time behind the kaiju as it turned its attention toward the land just over a mile away, to the Shatterdome and the other kaiju.  Chris’s grin matched Vin’s, wide and feral, as they fired the cannon, blast after blast tearing into the beast’s  side and back until it stopped moving.  Then, because they were in each other’s head and Chris knew Vin could feel how very anxious he was, they turned Desert Thunder back toward the Shatterdome.

 

“Desert Thunder!” the marshal’s voice crackled over the comm.  “What are you doing? Hold your position!”

 

Chris glanced over at Vin.  “We’re returnin’ to the Shatterdome,” Vin answered, as calm as if they hadn’t just almost died.  “We’re already up and runnin’, and…”

 

“And nothing!” the marshal cut in.  “You are to stay out of the bay and conduct a visual sweep.  If one kaiju could sneak past our sensors… there might be more.”  Then his voice turned cold as the ocean.  “And we _will_ be discussing what happened out there when you get back, make no mistake.”  The comm cut off with an angry-sounding click.

 

“Well,” Vin drawled into the heavy silence, “at least we’ve got _that_ to look forward to.”

 

Chris snorted; he couldn’t help himself.

 

It wasn’t going to be fun by any stretch of the imagination.

 

The silence that filled the Conn-Pod after that wasn’t an easy one; it was loaded with a tension that hadn’t been there even when they’d been fighting the kaiju.

 

He wanted to apologize, wanted to explain… but whatever he’d been thinking, Vin already knew.  The Drift picked up most on strong emotions and deliberate intentions; it was how pairs of pilots could move a Jaeger, and why getting lost in a memory was so dangerous.

 

Besides that, _he_ already knew what Vin would say if he opened his mouth about it now: there was no sense in talking it over when they were in the middle of an alert.  That could get them killed just as fast as… as breaking the Drift could have.

 

“No sense just standin’ here,” Chris said, and felt the words echo down the Drift.  “Might as well head back toward the mouth of the bay while we’re doin’ that _visual sweep_ , right?”

 

It was Vin’s turn to snort.  “I can see how you might have given your mama a grey hair or two,” he replied drily.  But he still moved in tandem with Chris, walking Desert Thunder back toward the spot where the bay opened to the ocean.

 

And if that meant they could see the battle in the harbor in front of the Shatterdome, well.  They were still guarding the bay and conducting the _visual sweep_ that they’d been ordered to perform. 

 

_And,_ Chris thought reluctantly, _we’ll be that much closer if Travis decides he needs us there after all._   Angry as the marshal seemed, he was still a practical man, and if things took a turn for the worse, he would call them back.  The closer they were if – or when – that happened, the better off everyone would be.

 

Moving gave them the opportunity to check Desert Thunder for damage.  She’d taken some, of course, but for the way they’d been manhandled by the kaiju, it was surprisingly light; nothing that couldn’t be easily repaired by the maintenance crew.

 

_If the Shatterdome is still standing,_ Chris couldn’t help but think.  Vin was silent on his end of the Drift, eyes flicking between the readouts and the view of the Shatterdome, concentrating on what came through the comm as much as Chris was.

 

They could hear the screams and roars of the second kaiju, the screech of claws against metal – all of it muted and _strange_ by virtue of being filtered through the concrete of the Shatterdome’s walls.

 

It turned Chris’s stomach just to think of it, that a kaiju had gotten by them and they hadn’t even known it.

 

_Wonder if that’s what we tripped over,_ he wondered suddenly.  _Thought it was Shellhead’s tail, but maybe…_   They’d been _that close_ to this second kaiju, if it had been hiding in Shellhead’s wake, and they hadn’t even _known_ it was there.  And now it was at the Shatterdome…

 

And they weren’t there to protect it.

 

Vin’s steady presence next to him in the Conn-Pod, and in the Drift humming between them, calmed his nerves better than a shot of whiskey.

 

They were more than a mile out, and despite the length of a Jaeger’s stride, it took time to walk all the way back.  They had just reached the mouth of the bay when an explosion lit up the sky, rumbling over the comm and through the air so that it felt like it happened twice.  The kaiju – a ratty-looking thing, skinny and small, small enough to hide in the first one’s wake, but still big enough to do damage – gave a strangled cry, as the blue slime that acted as its blood spilled out to slick the surface of the bay.

 

The Jaeger – probably Bravo Red, since Ezra had said that’s who they were scrambling – fired a couple more times at the flailing mass of kaiju flesh and blue sludge and poisoned water, then took hold of the carcass and hauled it up out of the bay and onto the narrow strip of land by the Shatterdome wall.  Almost immediately, a chopper rose from the helipad on the far side of the Shatterdome.  The Jumphawk pilot laughed when he saw them at the mouth of the bay waving up at him, a clear black point in the steel-blue of the water.

 

“Thanks for saving me a trip, Desert Thunder,” the pilot said, circling over them and then heading back to his landing pad.  They trudged through the bay, to the great bay doors of the Shatterdome slowly opening on their massive servos.

 

Chris couldn’t help but search out the damage the second kaiju had done; a dent in the metal doors, a few craters in the reinforced concrete, but nothing more.  _Safe,_ he thought, letting out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.  _Nothing happened…_

 

Then the doors were open enough for them to enter.

 

Marshal Travis usually stayed in LOCCENT after the kaiju battles, so he could take a look at the Jaegers as they returned and get an idea for the kind of repairs they needed.  He needn’t have because of course he got detailed reports from the chief of each repair crew, but his estimates were rarely wrong.

 

So Chris wasn’t surprised to hear the marshal over the comm as soon as Desert Thunder had walked into her bay in the Shatterdome.  “Rangers Tanner and Larabee, report to Medical, then _immediately_ to my office.”  The emotion in the old man’s voice was palpable.

 

Chris had figured they would be debriefed before going to Medical for their post-deployment once-over.  Neither of them had anything more than bruises, and, really, the circumstances warranted it. 

 

_Then again,_ he thought, not quite privately, _what happened out there could have real serious repercussions_.  He knew why he wanted to see the Marshal before going to Medical, though; he just didn’t want to put off the inevitable chewing-out.

 

The neural handshake dissolved the way it was supposed to – each of them slowly withdrawing from that shared space and back into their own heads with their own memories – and Chris sagged in his side of the Conn-Pod.

 

Vin took off his helmet; his hair was matted down with sweat.  “Reckon we’d better get goin’, cowboy,” he said, but he didn’t look at Chris as he spoke.

 

Without the Drift, Chris wasn’t certain what Vin was thinking, but he could guess.  “None of this is on you, Vin,” he said, tugging at his own helmet until it came free.

 

“Yeah, I know.” At last Vin met his gaze, and Chris was relieved to see no accusation in Vin’s face.  Then his mouth quirked up in a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.  “But when I said I was all right with you jockeyin’ with someone else, I didn’t mean in the middle of a fight.”

 

Chris nodded slowly.  _I earned this,_ he thought, and squared his shoulders.  He could face what he’d done; Vin deserved that much and more.

 

The medics that checked him and Vin over had an air of urgency about them, and subjected both of them to multiple neural scans, some of which Chris couldn’t remember having been through since the Academy.  After the usual battery of tests – and then some – they were released with pointed instructions to return if they felt _anything_ out of the ordinary.

 

Within moments, he and Vin stood outside Travis’s office.  The door was closed, an unusual occurrence, but Chris figured that, too, was warranted today.  He shrugged at Vin and knocked.  Travis’s voice was terse when he ordered, “Come in.”

 

Today, the marshal did not pretend to work on reports, he didn’t pretend not to notice them.  He glared at them both as they stood before his desk, and they could only wait for what was to come.

 

They didn’t have to wait long.

 

“What happened out there today was completely unacceptable!” Travis said.  He wasn’t shouting; he barely even raised his voice.  But the disappointment that coated every word was worse than if he’d been in a towering rage.

 

Chris stared straight ahead, past Travis and out the window of his office.  “It was my fault, Marshal,” he said.  “I fell out of alignment first.”

 

“I know that.”  Travis put his hands on his desk and leaned forward.  “What I want to know is _why_.”

 

Chris turned his gaze back to the marshal.  Travis already knew _why_ , he realized; he just wanted to hear it aloud.  His jaw worked but he was unable to force the words out past the tightness in his throat.

 

Beside him, Vin cleared his throat, as if he meant to speak, and he just couldn’t let Vin say what _he_ ought to.  “I was…” _Distracted… worried…_ He swallowed.  _Scared._ They were all true, but only one, he suspected, was what the marshal wanted to hear.  “I was worried, sir,” he said quietly, fixing his gaze on Travis, trying to impress on him just how deeply today’s attack had affected him.  “A kaiju we couldn’t detect until it surfaced _right outside_.” He gestured unerringly toward the bay side of the Shatterdome.  _Everything I’ve got left in the world is here_ , he thought, but he couldn’t say those words even if his life depended on it.

 

“I had noticed, Mister Larabee,” Travis said, his tone dry.  It hardened again as he continued.  “But that wasn’t the reason.”

 

He could still hear himself calling Ezra’s name, forcing himself out of the Drift.  “No, sir, it wasn’t.”

 

“Hmm.”  Travis studied him briefly, then leaned back in his chair.  “Mister Larabee, please wait outside.  I must speak with Mister Tanner alone.”

 

For a moment, all Chris could do was stare; it was practically unheard of for a team to be debriefed separately after a deployment.  Then, just as anger started to cloud Travis’s features again, he somehow managed to get his feet moving.

 

“It’s all right, Chris,” Vin said quietly as Chris passed him.  Chris nodded, closed the door to Travis’s office behind him.

 

He waited in the corridor for what seemed like an eternity, feeling like a schoolboy called to see the principal even more than he had when he _had_ been that schoolboy.  When Vin stepped out, he barely had a chance to register that his co-pilot didn’t hold any undeserved tension before Travis beckoned him in.

 

Settling behind his desk again, Travis steepled his fingers together.  “Do you have any idea what you could have done to Mister Tanner today?” he asked gravely.  “What you could have done to _yourself_?”

 

Pulling out of the Drift without waiting for the neural handshake to be disengaged could have serious consequences for both pilots, from a Drift hangover that lingered for days to neural pathway blowout.  It had been drummed into every pilot and wannabe all through the Academy.  “I know, sir,” he replied.  “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did.”

 

Travis rubbed his forehead as if massaging away a headache.  “I know that, Mister Larabee.  But the problem is that it _did_ happen.  I can’t have pilots that can’t hold a Drift under every circumstance; you would be putting not only your lives in danger, but the lives of every civilian along this stretch of coastline.”

 

Chris stared, cold dread filling his chest.  “Marshal…”

 

“I have already informed Mister Tanner that he and Mister Wilmington will be co-piloting together as soon as he is cleared by Medical,” Travis went on, overriding Chris’s half-formed protest.  “They’ll put Grey Maverick through her paces next week.”

 

The new Mark-IV Jaeger.  Chris nodded, the dread eating away at him until he felt as hollow as he’d been after San Francisco.  _At least Vin will be with Buck_ , he thought distantly.  _Buck will look after him._   The algorithm that paired up Rangers had shown that, in a pinch, Buck would be compatible with either Chris or Vin… but then had gone on to show that he’d be compatible with a selection of other Rangers as well.    No one understood why he might Drift so easily with so many different Rangers, and he’d undergone easily twice as many tests and examinations as Vin and Chris had in order to find out.  He’d been in his share of battles in a number of different Jaegers, but hadn’t been able to stick with a co-pilot for more than a battle or two.

 

The marshal watched him without speaking, as if waiting for him to take in the ramifications.  “What – ” Chris had to swallow in order to continue.  “What about Desert Thunder… and me?”

 

Travis leaned back in his chair until it creaked a protest.  “Desert Thunder will undergo an extensive refit; she’s long overdue for one.  While she’s off the line, Chris… I’m sending you back to the Academy.”  He held up one hand as if to forestall Chris’s protest, but Chris, stunned, could only gape.  “You’ll be there as a guest instructor, just for four to six weeks, while Thunder is going through her refit. For the most part, you’ll be assisting the current crop of cadets with preparing for the Drift.”  He eyed Chris, as if his silence was unexpected.  “It’s not permanent,” he added more gently.  “It’s not exile, and you’re not being drummed out of the Corps.  I hope you’ll be able to use this time to… well.  Get your mind back in the game, to put it bluntly.”

 

_This is your punishment._   Travis didn’t say it, but he might as well have.

 

“When am I getting shipped out?” That numb, _dead_ feeling was back, was filling up his chest.

 

Travis studied him, blue eyes faded but still keen behind his wire-rim glasses.  “The orders will be ready by the time you’ve finished packing your gear,” he said, still in that same soft tone.  “You’ll take a transport to the Academy tomorrow at oh-seven hundred.  Until then, you will be off-duty.”

 

Chris nodded, unable to do anything else.  He wanted to shout, to vent his anger because this _wasn’t fair_.  _Got no one to blame for this but me,_ he reminded himself, and swallowed down the words.  “And… when I get back?”

 

“I suppose that’ll depend on what happens while you’re at the Academy,” Travis replied, picking up a stylus and tapping it on his desk without looking away from Chris.  “Desert Thunder will still be available, of course, after her refit.”

 

_If you still have a partner._   He didn’t say that either, but Chris heard it as clearly as he had the other… and wanted to think about it just as much.

 

“Permission to prepare for transfer,” he said, his voice flat.

 

“Granted.”  Travis tilted his head toward the door.

 

Moving mechanically, Chris made his way out of Travis’s office, heading to the living quarters only by virtue of having gone there so many times.

 

He had to pack, yes, but first he had to find Vin.  Vin would probably be there, maybe trying to sleep, maybe just waiting for him so they could have the conversation they needed to have.  Chris just didn’t know how Vin would be able to believe his apologies were sincere when he was thinking every moment of what he would say to Ezra.

 

***

Even though Chris had been waiting for the creak the door made when opening, it still made him twitch; he had been lost in thought, trying to figure out how to tell Ezra he was being shipped out.

 

He had expected he would just have to blurt it out when he returned to their quarters, but for the first time ever, Ezra wasn’t there to give Chris his own check for injuries.  The room was empty, the bed still half-made; he’d been straightening up when the kaiju alarm had taken him away.  Ezra’s absence had, if possible, lowered his spirits even further.

 

But now Ezra had returned, wearing his blankest expression, and Chris had to wonder if Travis had already told him, or, worse, if he’d called _Ezra_ on the carpet too, if he wanted to blame Chris’s failing on Ezra.  If that was the case, then head of the Shatterdome or no, Travis was going to know just how Chris felt about _that_.

 

The door clanged as Ezra pushed it closed.  “I must apologize,” he said, his Southern accent more pronounced than usual.  “The good marshal requested my presence and sent Mister Dunne to fetch me just as I was leaving LOCCENT.”

 

Because Ezra would know almost to the second how long it took Medical to clear rangers after an action, and would time his departure accordingly… as would Marshal Travis.

 

Chris nodded, then shifted slightly on the bunk in silent invitation.  Ezra settled beside him, close enough their arms and shoulders brushed with every breath.  Without even thinking, he matched his breathing to Ezra’s; he’d done it so often with Vin in the Conn-Pod that it was second nature.

 

Before he could even find the words to ask all his questions – _Why did Travis want to see you? What did he tell you? Do you know…?_ – Ezra leaned into his shoulder and away again, a brief touch. “I don’t think there wasn’t a jaw in LOCCENT that didn’t drop when you broke the Drift,” he said quietly.  “None of them thought it could be done with the Pons still working.”

 

Chris managed not to flinch.  “Yeah, I didn’t think so either.”  Then he twisted around to meet Ezra’s knowing grin.  “What do you mean, _them_?”

 

This time, Ezra stayed propped against his shoulder.  “My dear Mister Larabee, I have long since learned that you defy expectations.”

 

He snorted.  “Well, I guess that’s one way to put it.”  Part of him wanted to put an arm around Ezra, pull him in tight, keep him close for the few short hours they still had before that transport took him away.  But before that, he had to tell Ezra he was being shipped out, if he didn’t already know.  “What did Travis tell you?”

 

Ezra tensed next to him, but it wasn’t until he spoke that Chris realized that it wasn’t due to Chris’s punishment.  “I’m… I’m gettin’ shipped out,” Ezra said, still in that same quiet tone. He’d tried to keep his voice level, but Chris could hear the hurt and unhappiness in it, things that Ezra never could keep from him even if he wanted to.

 

When the meaning registered, though, his stomach dropped.  _Travis is punishin’_ Ezra _for_ my _mistake,_ he thought, anger flaring white-hot at the unfairness of it all. It was followed by a wave of loneliness, even though Ezra was right next to him – not for right now, but for the future, a dread of what it would be like when he returned from the Academy.  _Ezra won’t be here,_ he thought, resisting the urge to curl his hand into a fist.  _He’ll be at some other Shatterdome when I come back, and they damn sure won’t transfer him back, not after what happened today._   “Where to?” he croaked, staring down at his feet.  _If I know,_ he thought, _I can get messages to him, anyway…_

 

Ezra laughed, a bitter bark of sound.  “Apparently the marshal believes it… expedient to separate us after what happened today.  To that end, he has at last _graciously_ ,” he sneered the word, and Chris got a glimpse of something he rarely saw – Ezra enraged; “approved my abominably ancient request to be removed from J-tech and sent to the Academy.  He even went so far as to point out that you yourself had requested my release after every kaiju action, so I could not reasonably…”

 

It took a moment for the words to register, because Ezra in full spate was a thing of wonder, but when they did, relief flooded him.  He sagged against Ezra with a rough chuckle.  “That crafty son-of-a-bitch.”

 

Ezra went stiff and silent next to him.  Nearly thirty seconds of quiet passed before he demanded, “What are you talkin’ about?”

 

Chris didn’t straighten away.  “Travis.  He’s reassignin’ me, too, Ezra – sendin’ me to the Academy.  Supposed to help out with some new pilots.”

 

He didn’t need to look at Ezra’s face to know that it contorted with a variety of expressions; the way his frame tensed and relaxed against him said it all.  At last, Ezra sighed.  “Well, he is a wily ol’ fox,” he said, his tone admiring and a bit rueful. 

 

_Probably thinkin’ he shoulda guessed,_ Chris thought, and ducked his head to hide his smile.  _Wish I had, too. S’pose that was the point, though._

 

“Chris?”

 

The uncertain note in Ezra’s voice snapped his attention back.  “Yeah?”

 

Ezra swallowed, and Chris knew what he was going to ask before he even opened his mouth.  “Are we really Drift-compatible?”  His green eyes were achingly open and almost vulnerable when he turned to face Chris.

 

“Yeah.” Chris reached up to brush his fingers against the line of Ezra’s jaw.  “Yeah, we are.  No question.”  The doubts he’d entertained in Travis’s office only weeks ago evaporated as if they’d never been.  He’d broken the Drift with Vin and reached out with everything he had… to try to Drift with Ezra.  If that didn’t show how Drift-compatible they were…

 

Ezra smiled, warm and real, and leaned into his touch.  “Just like that?”

 

Chris grinned back, his hand curving around the back of Ezra’s neck to pull him as close as he could.  “Yep, just like that.”

 

***

February 24, 2016

Revised May 5, 2016

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~Blame-Laying:~~ This would never have been written if [DichotomyStudios](http://archiveofourown.org/users/DichotomyStudios/pseuds/DichotomyStudios) hadn't said something about wondering what would happen if Chris was Drift-compatible with someone who _wasn't_ his lover. Of course, I was infected and this is the result.


End file.
